Day 144: Isaiah 39-42


I've reached the transition from part 1 to part 2 of Isaiah. Sixty-six chapters, and divided just as the Old and New Testaments are, at 39, with Hezekiah's pitiful failure to care for the generations to follow him. In spite of this announcement of destruction, loss and captivity, Isaiah looks forward to another day, some 720 years later, when John the Baptist would prepare the way for the LORD, (Isaiah 40:3), so that the people might "behold your God" (v. 9). It is because He is the First (Isaiah 41:4, 27) that He can declare for us things to come. (Isaiah 41:22) He made it so clear, and Isaiah was a treasured book of the Jews. How could they have missed Jesus? How could John the Baptist's message have been so mysterious to them? 

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